Renewables on the Rise

A decade of progress toward a clean energy future

The 2018 edition of a report by Frontier Group and

Photo: Dennis Schroeder/National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Over the last decade, clean energy has grown by leaps and bounds. Technologies that can help America shift away from fossil fuels — like solar panels, wind turbines, LED light bulbs, energy storage and electric cars — have gone from novelties to core features of the nation's energy landscape.

Clean energy technologies are booming across America

Since 2008, America has made rapid progress on renewable energy and the technologies that enable us to shift our economy to clean energy. Just a decade ago, many key clean energy technologies were limited to niche markets or perceived as too expensive. Today, the rapid adoption of wind and solar power and energy efficiency technologies — along with the emergence of electric vehicles and energy storage — provides us with greater confidence that a transition to an economy powered with clean, renewable energy is within reach.

Solar and wind energy have grown exponentially

In 2008, solar rooftops and utility-scale power plants produced 0.05 percent of America’s electricity, or enough electricity to power 180,000 average American homes. By the end of 2017, solar power generated more than 2 percent of America's electricity, enough to power 7 million average American homes.

By the end of 2008, America had built up a modest capacity for generating electricity from the wind, producing 1.5 percent of the nation’s electricity, enough to power more than 3 million homes. In 2017, wind turbines produced 6.9 percent of America’s power, enough to power 24 million homes.

America is also poised for an offshore wind breakthrough: In 2016, America's first utility-scale offshore wind turbines began spinning off the coast of Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, U.S. energy consumption has dropped by 1.1 percent since 2008, despite a growing population and economy. Between 1950 and 2008, total energy use in the United States nearly tripled. Today, America uses less energy than it did in 2000, when the country had 44 million fewer people.

Electric vehicles are increasingly popular

Transitioning the economy to renewable energy means ending the use of fossil fuels to power our cars and trucks as well as our homes. The first modern electric cars did not appear on American roads until the late 2000s, and as late as 2010 the number of electric cars numbered only in the hundreds. From 2008 to 2017, however, 395,000 all-electric vehicles were sold in the U.S., and in 2017 electric vehicles broke past 100,000 in annual sales for the first time.

Battery storage technology poised for growth

By storing energy generated by wind turbines and solar panels, energy storage technologies can help enable a future in which the vast majority of our energy comes from renewable sources. Because of their flexibility, batteries will likely play a particularly important function for a renewable grid — and there are signs that battery storage is taking off. Between 2008 and 2017, the U.S. added 666 MW of utility-scale battery energy storage, for a total of 708 MW — a 17-fold increase in battery storage power capacity.

RENEWABLES ON THE RISE: KEY FACTS

Solar energy has grown 39-fold since 2008

Photo: U.S. Air Force/Lou Hernandez

Wind energy has grown five-fold since 2008

Photo: Igor Trepeshchenok via Pexels

U.S. per capita energy consumption has dropped by 7.7 percent since 2008

Photo: NASA Earth Observatory/NOAA NGDC via Wikimedia Commons

Annual sales of electric vehicles have grown to more than 100,000

Photo: Håkan Dahlström via Flickr

Battery energy storage has grown 17-fold since 2008

Photo: UniEnergy Technologies via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY SA 4.0

Accelerating the pace of change

The U.S. can and must accelerate our clean energy progress and end our dependence on fossil fuels in order to prevent the worst impacts of global warming. Transitioning to clean, renewable energy will also improve our health by preventing hazardous air pollution.

If renewable energy generation grows by 14 percent per year — slightly more than two-thirds of the current rate of growth, wind and solar alone will produce enough electricity to meet all of our current electricity needs by 2035.